OnePlus 2 Challenge: Day 7 - Display, Buttons & Fingerprint Scanner

Welcome to Day 7 of the OnePlus 2 30-Day Challenge. Last week, I went over the hardware, the build construction and just the overall durability of the device. In this video, I’m going to give you my thoughts on the display, the capacitive touch navigation button and the software buttons, as well as the fingerprint scanner here on PhoneDog.com.

Based off last week’s video, you all didn’t seem too interested in the display. I didn’t really receive too many questions about the display so I’m not going to spend too much time covering it. When I talk about performance battery life in the next week, I’ll be answering as many of your questions as possible so stay tuned for that.

The OnePlus 2 features a 5.5-inch 1080p LCD display with a 401ppi index. While pretty much all the flagship smartphones this year feature QHD resolution displays, the OnePlus 2 went with a pretty modest 1080p panel. That’s not a bad thing at all. It gets the job done but in my opinion, it just doesn’t stand out or really impress me much at all. For comparison, the Galaxy Note 5’s display looks so good I literally cannot put the phone down. I’m so impressed with just how vibrant and bright that display is and I can’t really say the same as the OnePlus 2. Colors don’t particularly pop or stand out but the white balance and color accuracy is very good.

In direct sunlight, the OnePlus 2 display is pretty killer. It’s an LCD panel and LCD panels have really always outperformed AMOLED panels outdoors. I haven’t had any major issues reading text or viewing content in general on the OnePlus 2 display on full brightness an in direct sunlight, of course.

It’s pretty unique with the OnePlus and the OnePlus 2 is that you have the option of using capacitive touch navigation buttons or software navigation buttons. I really like how I have more screen real estate by using the capacitive buttons but I personally do not prefer them over the software navigation buttons even if there is more screen real estate. With the touch buttons, you can control which one is for multitasking and which one is for the back button. But the button themselves are just lit up lines so you actually have to memorize the layout. There are no icons to give you hints that one of the buttons is for multitasking and one is for going back in the application. So you really just have to memorize it. Probably not a big issue for most of you but I am rocking two daily drivers right now. And I do get mixed up pretty often.

I’m a big fan of stock Android. I’ve actually been using the Nexus 6 running Android Marshmallow up until I switched over to the OnePlus 2 so I decided to go with software navigation buttons to give me that stock Android feel that I’m used to and I just prefer right now.

The home button is kind of weird. It’s not physical. It is a capacitive touch navigation button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner. You can register up to 5 fingers and you just press and hold—no swiping required, which is awesome. I hate those swipe fingerprint scanners. It works really well compared to, say, the iPhone 6 Plus. It definitely unlocks faster. There is a little bit of delay though once the display is off and you try to unlock the device. I almost would like it to be a physical home button so that it will register my fingers slightly faster and would be more consistent n registering my command and my fingerprint.

But overall, it works really well. As you can see, compared to the Note 5 and the iPhone 6 Plus, this fingerprint scanner definitely competes. With that said, if you guys have any specific questions regarding software, performance, battery life, camera—whatever it is, let me know and I will do my best to answer it in a coming video. I do have a question for you though: capacitive touch buttons, physical buttons, or software buttons? Let me know what your thoughts are in a comment down below.

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